I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.
Are you slow-witted? I'm so sorry for you. It's terrible to be dull and stupid.
Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues - it's one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships.
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.
All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.
That is why your sacrifice was all the more difficult. You chose to be a hero not through enchantment but through your own manhood.